The UFC women’s roster has, unfortunately, always played second fiddle to the male roster. Outside a few notable exceptions, women UFC competitors rarely develop the hype of their male peers. It’s a shame as we’ve seen some fantastic female fights in the UFC, and we’re likely to see even more.
We figured we’d put together a guide of the up-and-coming female UFC fighters to keep an eye out for. Some of these you probably would have seen fight more than a couple of times. However, each of these fighters could go even further in the UFC. They are pound-for-pound the best female fighters currently on the roster, and you can guarantee that if any one of these fighters is in a match, you’ll be awestruck by how fantastic it is.
Let’s look.
Weili Zhang
Weili Zhang has been kicking around in the UFC since 2018, making at least one appearance at a major event every year. Since joining, she has lost just two matches, both against Rose Namajunas, but with the second being a loss by split decision, she was so close to taking it.
Weili Zhang is now running on the back of a four match-winning streak. She isn’t pumping out simple wins, though. Oh no. She has managed to knock back the likes of Xiaonan Yan and Amanda Lemos with unanimous decisions, and we saw her land one of the most awesome Crucifix Rear Naked Chokes when she was fighting Carla Esparza.
We feel like Weili Zhang still has a lot of juice in the tank, so keep an eye out for her in 2025 as she is about to hit the serious big time.
Alexa Grasso
Alexa Grasso has had somewhat of a sporadic time since joining the UFC, with plenty of cancelled bouts to her name. Nowadays, she seems to be locked in a feud with Valentina Shevchenko. Her first bout against her was a win, followed by a split-decision draw. She now seems to be facing Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 306 in September.
Before joining the UFC, Alexa Grasso was going hard in all sorts of different promotions. She even managed to finish her first proper bout in under 20 seconds. She has an epic punch on her.
We don’t think she has managed to hit her stride in the UFC just yet but, when she does, she’ll easily be at the top of the flyweight division. She’s only fifth now, but that climb will be rapid, especially if she can cast the Valentina Shevchenko feud to one side.
Valentina Shevchenko
Until she faced Alexa Grasso, Valentina Shevchenko was undefeated in nine matches, with only Amanda Nunes besting her before that. While we don’t think she quite has the skill to take on Alexa Grasso right now (although, it would be a close bout), we do see Valentina Shevchenko having a proper play with the flyweight division after UFC 306 and the Grasso match is out the way. We’ll expect those wins to start racking up again.
She’s a woman we’ll probably be betting on quite a bit after the Grasso fight. We’ll deposit at a top online sportsbook with one of the various deposit methods (https://www.askgamblers.com/sports-betting/deposit-methods) before placing our bets.
Manon Fiorot
Manon Fiorot has won every single bout she’s taken part in at the UFC, most of them by decision, and is currently ranked as the fourth best pound-for-pound female fighter in MMA. Her last match handed Erin Blanchfield her first loss in the UFC. At the moment, Manon has only been winning by decision (there have been one or two events where she won with punches). So, we do expect that she’ll want to train a bit more to help end some of those bouts earlier. When that happens, we reckon she has the talent, and the strength, to put on a show in flyweight, even if she’ll never be top of the division.
Rose Namajunas
Rose’s life in the UFC has been somewhat sporadic. For a while, she seemed to be nigh on unbeatable, and then rapidly had a ton of losses in a row. One loss was particularly bad, against Gillian Robertson in Fury Pro, where she lost in around one minute. With her performance in July 2024, she does seem to be back on track somewhat and may be worth keeping an eye out for in 2025.
Cris Cyborg
Cris Cyborg is on a seven-win streak. You know she is good. But, you know what? We don’t think she has quite hit her stride. While we think she’ll eventually be taken over by some of the other female fighters on this list, we reckon Cris Cyborg is going to dominate the featherweight division for at least a couple more years. Hr goal now could well be to end matches as quickly as possible as most of her bouts have been by KO across some absolute slobber-knockers, particularly with her boxing prowess.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens in 2025, because the UFC have been muttering about bringing her back into the fold, despite her having been away for four years now.
